It’s September now, and whatever happened to the summer, which this year seems to have passed in the blink of an eye? Although this is one of my favourite months, nonetheless it always holds for me a feeling of slight melancholy. The leaves are beginning to turn and the days are shortening rapidly as we hurtle towards autumn, the cooler months – and of course Christmas! At which thought I soon cheer up again!
This has been a fantastic year in the garden for all kinds of fruit and vegetables. I am overwhelmed with courgettes (zucchini) as I always seem to plant too many! I have also been busily peeling, chopping and pureeing apples for the freezer, which reminds me of my own mother. I enjoyed a country childhood, and we had a small orchard to the side of our house – half a dozen apple trees, a couple of plums and a damson. The apples were prolific fruiters, and each year she would freeze huge quantities of apple puree, taking the last container from her chest freezer (very 1970’s) as the first apples from the new harvest were falling from the trees. She had a recipe book called “A Hundred Different Ways with Apples” and I am convinced we ate every single recipe in that book. It was years before I could face eating any more of them!
Although I do eat apples today, I prefer plums, damsons, and even greengages, though these can be rather tart and are perhaps an acquired taste. Plums have been around here in the UK for a very long time as wild plums, damsons and sloes have been naturalised here since the Ice Age. The Romans cultivated plums, and many varieties survived through the Dark Ages in monastery gardens, although they’re less frequently mentioned than apples or pears. When the hull of Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose which sank in the Solent in 1545 was raised to the surface in 1982, it was found to contain several hundred plum stones of five recognisable varieties, including the damson.
Plum Crumble
A favourite early autumn recipe of mine is plum (rather than the rather more usual apple) crumble and so I thought I’d share it with you here in case you too have a lot of fruit to use up this year….
Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Put 800g Victoria plums (halved and stoned) into the base of a shallow dish about 28cm long. Mix together 50g light brown sugar, finely grated zest of one orange, 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon and plain flour and sprinkle over the plums. Trickle over 2 tablespoons of water.
Rub together with your fingers 250g plain flour and 150g of softened butter. Stir through 80g each of caster and demerara sugar together with 50g ground almonds. Scatter the crumble over the plums and bake in the oven for 30–40 mins until golden brown. Leave for about 15 mins before serving with custard or cream.
CLICK HERE for a quick look inside the September Magazine
I love putting the magazine together, as I find out so many interesting things that I’d probably never otherwise have discovered. In the September magazine for example, you can read about one of the first female entrepreneurs in the Lake District, discover Indian whitework and why muslin was considered rather risque in the early part of the nineteenth century! I’m already working on the October edition, and will be including an article on Louisa Pesel (inspired by my most recent read – Tracy Chevalier’s “A Single Thread” and have begun stitching the first design too. It’s October, so there will be pumpkins galore as well as lots of other autumn-themed, (and Christmas too) designs.
If you’d like to learn more about subscribing to the magazine then please just CLICK HERE to visit our subscriptions page.
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